leaped to his feet.
“Afternoon, guy.” Good day, Harold. I won’t be taking the car.
just stepping out for a few minutes.” He stepped over the threshold of the gate, into the street and turned left, down towards the junction of
Leadenhall Street and Aldgate. He walked fast, without seeming to hurry. Caliph spaced his intervals very tight, to make it difficult for the subject to pass a message to a surveillance unit. Steven knew he had only minutes to get from his office to the call box on the corner. Caliph seemed to know exactly how long it would take him.
The telephone in the red-framed and glass call box started to ring when he was still twenty paces away. Steven ran the distance.
“Stride,” he said, his voice slightly puffed with exertion, and immediately the coin dropped and the same electronic droning voice gave him the next contact point. It was the public call box at the High
Street entrance to Aid ate tube station. Steven confirmed and the voice troubled him deeply, it sounded like that of a robot from some science fiction movie. It would not have been so bad if he had felt human contact.
The two receiving stations, neither of which was predictable, and the distances between them, had been carefully calculated to make it only just possible to reach them in time, to make it impossible for the call to be traced while the line was still open. Caliph or his agent was clearly moving from one call box to the next in another part of the city. Tracing them even a minute after he had left would be of no possible use in trying to establish identity.
The voice distorter that Caliph was using was a simple device no bigger than a small pocket calculator. Peter had told Steven that it could be purchased from a number of firms specializing in electronic surveillance, security and counter-measure equipment. It cost less than fifty dollars, and so altered the human voice phasing out all sound outside the middle range that even the most sophisticated recording device would not be able to lift a useable voice.
print to compare with a computer bank memory. It would not even be able to determine whether the speaker was a man, a woman or a child.
Steven had an unusually clear path to the station, and found himself waiting outside the call box in the crowded entrance to the station while a young man in paint-speckled overalls, with long greasy blond hair, finished his conversation. Caliph’s system allowed for prior use of the chosen public telephone, and as soon as the scruffy youth finished his leisurely chat, Steven pushed into the booth and made a show of consulting the directory.
The phone rang, and even though he was expecting it, Steven jumped with shock. He was perspiring now, with the walk and the tension, and his voice was ragged as he snatched the receiver.
“Stride,” he gulped.
The coin dropped and Caliph’s impersonal tones chilled him again.
“Yesr :1 have a message.” Yes?”
“There is danger for Caliph.”
“Yesr “A government intelligence agency has put an agent close to him,
close enough to be extremely dangerous.”
“Say the source of your information.”
“My brother. General Peter Stride.” Peter had instructed him to tell the truth, as much as was possible.
“Say the government agency involved.”
“Negative. The information is too sensitive. I must have assurance that Caliph receives it personally.”
“Say the name or position of the enemy agent.”
“Negative.
For the same reasons.” Steven glanced at his gold Cartier tank watch with its black alligator strap. They had been speaking for fifteen seconds he knew the contact would not last longer than thirty seconds. Caliph would not risk exposure beyond that time. He did not wait for the next question or instruction.
“I will pass the information only to Caliph, and I must be certain it is him, not one of his agents. I request a personal meeting.”
“That is not possible, “droned the inhuman voice.
“Then Caliph will be in great personal danger.” Steven found courage to say it.
“I repeat, say the name and position of enemy agent.” Twenty-five seconds had passed.
“I say again, negative. You must arrange a face-to-face meeting for transfer of this information.” A single droplet of sweat broke from the hairline of Steven’s temple and ran down his cheek. He felt as though he were suffocating in the claustrophobic little telephone box.
“You will be contacted,” droned the voice and the line clicked dead.
Steven took the white silk handkerchief from his top pocket and dabbed at his face. Then he carefully rearranged the scrap of silk in his pocket, not folded into neat spikes but with a deliberately casual drape.
He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin and left the booth. Now for the first time he felt like a brave man. It was a feeling he relished, and he stepped out boldly swinging the rolled umbrella with a small flourish at each pace.
Peter had been within call of the telephone all that week, during the hours of involvement with the series of Narmco projects which he had put in train before his departure for Tahiti, and which all seemed to be maturing simultaneously. There were meetings that began in the morning and lasted until after dark, there were two separate day journeys, one to Oslo and another to Frankfurt, catching the early businessman’s plane and back in the Narmco office before evening.
Always he was within reach of a telephone and Steven Stride knew the number; even when he was in the NATO Officers Club gymnasium,
sharpening his body to peak physical condition, or practising until after midnight in the underground pistol range until the 9-mm. Cobra was an extension of his hands either hand, left or right, equally capable of grouping the X circle at fifty metres, from any position, standing,
kneeling or prone, always he was within reach of the telephone.
Peter felt like a prize fighter in training camp, concentrating all his attention on the preparations for the confrontation he knew lay ahead.
At last the weekend loomed, with the prospect of being boring and frustrating. He refused invitations to visit the country home of one of his Narmco colleagues, another to fly down to Paris for the Saturday racing and he stayed alone in the Hilton suite, waiting for the call from Steven.
On Sunday morning he had all the papers sent up to his room,
English and American and French German which he could read better than he spoke, and even the Dutch and Italian papers which he could stumble through haltingly, missing every third word or so.
He went through them carefully, trying to find a hint of Caliph’s activity. New abductions, hijackings or other acts which might give him a lead to some new Caliph-dominated pressures.
Italy was in a political uproar. The confusion so great that he could only guess at how much of it was from the left and how much from the right. There had been an assassination in Naples of five known members of the Terrorist Red Brigade, all five taken out neatly with a single grenade.
The grenade type had been determined as standard NATO issue, and the execution had been in the kitchen of a Red Brigade safe apartment in a slum area of the city. The police had no leads. It sounded like
Caliph. There was no reason to believe that his “chain” did not include prominent Italian businessmen. A millionaire Italian living in his own country had to be the earth’s most endangered species after the blue whale, Peter thought wryly, and they might have called on Caliph to go on the offensive.
Peter finished the continental papers, and turned with relief to the English and American. It was a little before Sunday noon, and he wondered how he could live out the desolate hours until Monday morning.
He was certain that there would be no reply to Steven’s request for a meeting before then.
He started on the English-language newspapers, spinning them out to cover the blank time ahead.
The British Leyland Motor Company strike was in its fifteenth week with no prospect of settlement. Now there was a case for Caliph,
Peter smiled wryly, remembering his discussion with Steven. Knock a few heads together for their own good.
There was only one other item of interest in his morning’s reading.
The President of the United States had appointed a special negotiator in another attempt to find a solution to
